Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers

[letak@feddit.org]

I also asked some creators, but they can’t because of the Google partnership Programm, it prohibits reupload on other platforms

[webghost0101@sopuli.xyz]

This is also a good beginner way to learn about self hosting in docker.

Freetube can make a great backup for when google inevitably breaks something.

And for thise videos you really cant miss there is always yt-dlp scripted to download a channels latests video on a schedule straight to jellyfin of course.

I have not visited the youtube website in more then a year.

[colonelsharki@lemmy.world]

Is google’s company motto still ‘Don’t be evil’?

[theangryseal@lemmy.world]

I’ve been dealing with this forever.

Some issues I have that I only deal with when I’m not signed in without an adblocker:

If I try to skip back to a spot in a video, I get the loading circle and sometimes it doesn’t come back until I refresh the page. I have to make a mental note of the time and do that pretty often.

In safari and Firefox I will get a black box for about 40 seconds, no play button, and sometimes I have to refresh the page a few times just to get it to work at all.

Comments will not load sometimes until I refresh the page, sometimes more than once.

The video will sometimes stop and start “loading” while I’m watching it. The solution is always a page refresh or two.

Signed in with an adblocker, the problems drop by about 50% (pulled that number out of my ass, but I’d be willing to bet it’s close). Signed in with no adblocker on Firefox or Safari and the issues become significantly less noticeable, with exceptions from time to time. Signed in with no adblocker on chrome or edge, I experience none of this.

I believe they purposely throttle it on non chromium browsers too.

Sorry if this comment is jumbled. Woke up in the middle of the night with a stomach ache, got bored waiting for it to pass, so now I’m here and barely conscious.

[remon@ani.social]

Yep, for me it ha been "fixed" for about a week now.

[critical_thinker@lemm.ee]

They removed that from their official code of conduct in 2018.

[timetraveller@lemmy.world]

So say we all.

[belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Grayjay

[crowairbrush@lemmy.world]

It was reported a decent amoint of time ago and i thought i felt a difference...turned out my isp was sending air bubbles through the internet cable.

After the internet stabilized i noticed exactly zero, just an occasional "restart browser because video's stopped playing alltogether"

[toothpaste_ostrich@feddit.nl]

Bless you.

[phr34ky@lemmy.world]

It was previously a "thread.sleep(5000)" in the client code IIRC.

[dfx4509b_2@lemmy.org]

YT's blocked on it. Fuck you, Google.

https://github.com/futo-org/grayjay-android/issues/2351

If Google's going to be further tightening YT to the degree where they might roll out DRM platform-wide as opposed to just limiting it to movies on the platform, I'm about to seriously start looking for stuff to watch on PeerTube because YT is not long for the world and will probably start pushing away anything that isn't AI slop at some point in terms of content.

UPDATE: A workaround has been released for this issue.

[aetherion@lemmy.world]

They cannot kill Adblocks, because if they would — a lot of html5 embedded YouTube videos would be coming worthless and so would youtube (discord for example)

[opinionhaver@feddit.uk]

As much as I hate dealing with their shenanigans, I can’t really blame them either. As long as I can get away with using an adblocker, I will - but honestly, YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for. I have no moral argument for why YouTube should let me watch videos for free, even though I like free stuff just as much as the next guy.

[baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

Oh hey I ran into that issue, fixed it by blocking the element on ublock and spoofing my user agent

Edit: I put more details under nameisnotimportant's comment, I was about to head to bed so I didn't really provide details LOL

[traister101@lemmy.today]

I did not always use an ad blocker. Frankly my stance is they've made their bed, now they get to lie down in it. If it wasn't for YouTubes ad quality being so poor I would have never bothered taking the 30 seconds it takes to install an adblock those 10 or so years ago

[coolkat@slrpnk.net]

"Is your video not loading ? Check out why, you fucking ad dodging commie" is the feeling i got from youtube's newest message while my video was unexpectedly taking 10s to load

[ulterno@programming.dev]

So here's what happened recently:

• I opened the Google News widget on my Android phone, saw a Sponsored link, and found it interesting
• Clicked on it, the link opened in Chrome, opening the googleadservices redirection thingummy
• Took over 5 seconds to process the redirect
• I exited the browser

Guess who missed ad money?

---

But of course, maybe they got the ad money and the only losers were:

• me, who didn't get to see the website that might actually have had something I wanted
• the website owner, who not only didn't get my business but also had to pay Google, because Google most probably processed the ad first and didn't care to process the redirect

I feel like I understand why they removed the "Do no evil" sign. Because now, they are messing with both, the product and the customers, only providing as much as is required to take their money, instead of the full, advertised service.

[d_c@lemm.ee]

I have ublock, with sponsor block and some others, and don't have any issues on yt as of yet. Just in case though, how do I block an element and spoof a user agent?

[pofski@lemmy.world]

Also interested in how you can do this.